Chương 453: (446) 6.60. A Tiny Idea

"It ain't good," Scule started, a heavy frown on his face as he looked around between all of them.

"From what I could see, when the trogums finally left their fragment, they hit the surrounding ones hard and fast. I don't know what sort of resistances the fragments put up, but none of the remains of the settlements looked all that large. I doubt villages or towns with anywhere from a few hundred to even a few thousand people were able to do a whole lot against the swarm of mindless trogums bearing down on them out of practically nowhere."

"Fighting against an opponent that cares little for their own wellbeing is much harder than most realize," Alka added.

"It is why monsters are so feared. The vast majority of them don't care if you strike them a lethal blow, so long as they hurt you just as bad."

"How many fragments are we talking about here?" Shia asked, looking understandably drained after having spent all day working on the Tamers. With the Whisperer's apprentices close by, running out of mana wasn't an issue she needed to worry about. But from what Vin understood, Regeneration required a significant amount of concentration, as Shia had to almost manually guide the magic and ensure it healed the wounds and regrew new flesh and organs correctly.

Even with her high focus, keeping that level of concentration up for hours on end had to take its toll.

"How many do they control now?"

"Four," Scule said, pausing for an appropriate moment of silence as his news sunk in.

"Obviously their original fragment was their own from the beginning, but so far, they've completely wiped out three additional fragments. I don't even know what species used to live there. There were no bodies left behind."

"Maybe the people made it out before they were killed?" Vin offered hopefully.

"Perhaps a few, but definitely not most," Scule said, his frown deepening. Reginald curled his tail around him and squeaked something positive, and Scule sighed, shaking his head.

"There was just so much blood … I haven't seen this level of carnage since the time I snuck onto the citadel wall and took a look down onto the eternal battlefield below a few years back. I know a massacre when I see one."

"The trogums are probably bringing the bodies back to their Queen for nutrients," Shia grimaced.

"Even if magic is involved to speed up the growth process, creating so many trogums in such a short time span has to require an incredible amount of biological resources."

"But the farther they advance, the more resources they have available to them," Alka pointed out.

"Not to mention with Edregon's unique makeup, all the plants and animals will just keep regenerating forever. They'll never strip the fragments clean, no matter how much they pull from them. We have to stop them."

"Three entire fragments, killed, just like that…" Vin muttered, barely having heard the following conversation after Scule had revealed that fact. Three whole civilizations, removed from the face of Edregon before he'd even gotten the chance to meet them. Their history, their culture, their lives, snuffed out in what sounded like a horrifically brutal slaughter, just so the trogum Queen could claim more territory.

After surviving the uptick in monster spawns on their own world for who knew how many years before being dragged away to Edregon, they just happened to be placed too close to the trogums' fragment, and their fate was sealed before they even knew it. Shia's hand landing on his shoulder snapped Vin out of his thoughts, and she gave him a sad smile, no doubt having an idea of the thoughts going through his head.

"It'll be even more if we don't do something soon. Scule, were you able to tell how close they were to moving onto the next fragment?"

"Oh yeah, that wasn't difficult," Scule snorted, walking over to the map Vin had sketched out for their conversation.

"What is difficult, however, is going to be how we respond. The trogums' forces have grown large enough by now that the Queen is moving on from assaulting one fragment at a time. As far as I could tell, the swarms were preparing to advance on three new fragments, all at once. And the dwarves' fragment we're currently within is one of them."

"We're strong, but we can't stop three separate armies," Alka said, stating the obvious.

"And we're too far away to lean on Terra's resources. The only chance we have at saving everyone is taking out the Queen."

"That requires us to find the Queen," Vin repeated, clenching his fists as he stared down at the three fragments Scule had indicated.

"Shia, can you use your divine boon? It's our best and only real shot at figuring out her location among these four fragments."

"I don't think so," she admitted with a frown.

"It would be one thing if the trogums were preparing to invade the Sacred Forest, but my people are too far away, and the trogums would have to go through quite a lot to get over there. As much as it pains me to say, I don't need to find the Queen. Not yet at least."

"Vin, you're the one with your crazy searching spells. You seriously can't whip something up?" Scule asked, getting an accompanying squeak from Reginald.

"I wouldn't even know where to start," Vin said, racking his brain for some method he could use to hone in on the Queen's location.

"I'm only able to tweak Sense Soul into my 'Sense Earther' variant because Earthers come to Edregon with zero points in their magic attribute. The Queen doesn't have any sort of unique variables like that I can hone in on. At least none that I know of." Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

"She has mind magic," Alka reminded him, her eyes flaring as the memory struck her.

"She nearly dropped you and Shia both like sacks of potatoes just from trying to communicate with the two of you when you first met. That means she must have a really high focus. Can you use that to track her somehow?"

"That's a good idea, but I just don't see how," Vin admitted.

"Tweaking Sense Soul to pick up a complete absence of an attribute is one thing, because it's so unnatural. But I don't think I can adjust it well enough to do the opposite. I can't just make a 'Sense everyone who has a focus greater than 100' variant."

"…I have an idea," Scule said, wincing as they all turned to look at him.

"It's a really, really bad one, but an idea nonetheless. If it works, it'll lead us straight to the Queen."

"What happens if it doesn't work?" Vin asked.

"Let's just say you guys will probably have to find a new Rogue," Scule replied, giving them a nervous smile.

"I'll be honest… I can't believe he's doing this," Shia admitted, pacing back and forth in front of their table as she growled in frustration.

"This isn't like Scule one bit! He's not the hero to put his own life on the line if he doesn't have to!"

"There's only a single fragment separating the trogums from the Citadel," Vin pointed out, having gone through the same thought process already.

"All it takes is the Rebel Queen deciding that forcing her army of trogums through the floating bubbles is doable, and all of a sudden, the Citadel is under attack. Sure, they've got their large walls, but how well do you think those under-leveled guards are going to hold up against thousands of mindless trogums? They'll climb over one another's bodies and breach the walls in no time. After that, they'll run rampant through the streets. Nowhere will be safe, and that includes Tiny Town and his family."

"I get all that… But did he really need to take Reginald with him?" Shia asked, wringing her hands with worry as she looked at him.

"Do you have any idea how long it's going to take me to get all that blood out of his fur?!" At this point, it had been a couple of hours since they'd enacted their plan and Scule and Reginald had taken off. Alka had taken over the role of watching the fragment perimeter, ensuring none of the trogums would be able to launch an attack without them knowing ahead of time.

Vin had tried to tell her the Whisperer could handle that role all on her own, what with her ability to seemingly know everything that went on within her fragment, but Alka couldn't sit still and went out anyway. With the moon high in the sky and nothing for them to do but hurry up and wait, Vin knew they should really try to get some rest. But knowing Scule and Reginald were out there, literally heading into the belly of the beast for the sake of everyone on Edregon…

Even with his Dormancy skill, Vin suspected he'd have a rough time trying to get any sleep tonight.

"Where are they now?" Shia asked him for probably the thirtieth time, and Vin sighed as he threw together the formation for Sense Soul yet again. Modifying it ever so slightly, he aimed the mana toward the east and cast, sending out a more powerful burst of mana than ever before.

In the past, even after learning the technique from Xaril to utilize the ambient mana in the air to expand his basic sensing spells to cover vast distances, Vin had been hesitant to risk casting a spell that crossed between fragment boundaries. He swore he could feel something akin to a slight hesitation in the mana itself whenever he attempted to do so, and that was always an unnerving sensation. Almost as though the mana was judging his spell and therefore him whenever he did such magic.

Unlocking Manacraft and getting to witness the truth of mana for himself had been more than a little terrifying as well, and at the time, Vin couldn't shake the feeling that if he poked at the sleeping bear too hard, it would turn around and tear his head off. Now, with his Friend of Mana Capstone, Vin had befriended that same bear. He was still appropriately nervous and maintained his careful approach, but was much more confident in his spellcasting.

As such, his modified Sense Soul spell blasted forward across over half a dozen fragments, covering such a large distance it took almost a full fifteen seconds for the mana to return to him and inform him of what he was looking for.

"He still hasn't—" Vin started, before blinking as he realized his spell had given him an ever so slightly different location than it had the last few times he'd cast it. Sending out a modified Sense Soul again, Vin's heart hammered in his chest as the mana rebounded back to him and he got confirmation yet again.

"I take it back, they're on the move!" Scule's plan was simple, but incredibly reckless. Having noted how all of the corpses from the trogums' fallen foes had been taken away, presumably straight back to the Rebel Queen for processing, he'd hatched an idea. All Scule needed to do was drag an animal's carcass into one of the already conquered fragments, hide within the body, and allow the trogums to bring him straight back to the Rebel Queen by their own power.

And so long as Vin placed one of his Soul Marks on him beforehand, Vin could use Sense Soul to find the petian regardless of where he was taken. It was risky and utterly disgusting, seeing as it required Scule and Reginald to hide inside a dead creature, even if it was just that of an animal. But it was their best bet for tracking down the Rebel Queen before she could wipe out any more fragments.

It seemed it had taken the trogums a few hours to actually find the carcass Scule was using as bait, but Vin's spell confirmed that the plan was working. Scule and Reginald were on his way to meet the Rebel Queen.

"We're going to have to move fast once they stop moving," Vin reminded her, getting to his feet and preparing to race out to find Alka.

"Neither of those two have any sort of defenses in place against the Rebel Queen's mind attacks. We can only hope she's preoccupied directing all her forces across multiple fragments to notice the two of them, but if she does, she could wipe their heads clean in an instant."

"We'll stop her before that happens," Shia said, looking confident as she grabbed her staff and headed for the door. But before she could reach it, the door was thrown open all on its own, and Alka stormed in. Seeing as she was a golem, she didn't have the same bodily functions they did. But from the way she all but sprinted into the room, Vin could easily imagine her panting as her head spun to lock onto the two of them.

"The trogums are on the move," she said, her eyes dimming as she narrowed them.

"They're coming."